The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Book review by Deane Barker • • tags: history, tech, innovation •
An image of the cover of the book "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation"

A solid history of Bell Labs. Interesting, but a bit tedious. It’s astonishing how much stuff was invented there – it puts Xerox PARC to shame, really. The transistor? Wow.

Meticulously researched, but tends to bog down under its own weight in places.

Book Data

Author
Jon Gertner
Year
Pages
422
Acquired
Not recorded
Open Library
OL16184356W
Wikipedia
The_Idea_Factory
↓ Inbound link from –
Solid State June 11, 2023

This is basically a marketing term, but one that described a massive shift in technology. All computers and electronics operate on the theory of boolean logic – 1 or 0, on or off, true or false. By combining a massive number of boolean logic “gates,” you can do an unlimited number of calculations….

This page is part of the Deane’s Library section of this site: